itch.io

A solid entry with all the basics of a crawler; movement, XP, monsters, combat log, music and sound, even a brief intro. No bugs that I found, which puts it ahead of my entry.

Some different monsters and some more loot or pickups other than medkits would have been nice. The game did feel a little light on the "cosmic horror" theme, given that it was just some empty halls with some easily-defeated enemies; without any other storytelling it felt more like just a monster hunt. 

But overall this seems like a good framework to build on. Thanks for submitting it!

I liked the rhythm element; it would be cool to see a full game based on this.

Thanks for contributing this! The graphics are impressive; unfortunately I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing. I didn't realize until I read the other comments that I was losing life (sanity?) every time I took a step.

Hi KatVolts! Big fan of your streams.

Kudos for managing an animated cutscene at the beginning of the game. I love the story between the two main characters and I want to just watch them having their vacation.

The graphics of the hotel are amazing--maybe too amazing for my laptop. After a while the game seemed to just stop responding to my inputs and I had to force quit.

I liked the mini-deckbuilder combat, though again, it ran a little sluggish on my computer.

Thanks for contributing this!

Yeah, the game size is one of the reasons I like the LÖVE engine. It helps me build games quickly without a lot of bloat.

Thanks for playing, and thanks for the comments!

I enjoyed this one! The controls were straightforward and I particularly liked how you could glimpse other areas of the map through gaps in the walls. A few comments:

• I didn't care for the mechanic that allowed you to attack as fast as you could tap the keyboard. I would have expected some sort of delay between attacks.
• There were a couple of instances where something instantly killed me but there was no indication what it was. I think these were traps, but I didn't notice any clear feedback to indicate what happened.
• To me this felt more like a "pulp action" game than a "cosmic horror" game. Still fun though!

Yeah, I feel terrible about that bug. It seems to happen when you press ENTER to try to select an empty inventory slot. I should have found it during testing. Thanks for trying, though!

Glad you had fun! Thanks for the comments, and thanks for playing!

Yeah, the combat results are more swingy than I expected. That's what I get for not thinking about the math. And I'll be kicking myself about that one inventory bug for months. But thanks for the comments, and thanks for playing!

Nice work! Looks like you got the basics of a dungeon crawler in there, but I have a few comments:

• Even with the hints on the floor, I had a hard time working out some of the controls. Sometimes the game seemed to want mouse input, sometimes it wanted keyboard input. For instance, I expected to be able to click on the attack/run buttons, but it seemed like only the keyboard worked for that.
• I could not get past the gray plant monsters (?) on the second level. Even with the nice sword and shield equipped, I just kept missing, and I couldn't seem to run away.
• The behavior of the game after you get killed seemed a little strange: do you just respawn right at the point where you were killed, with half your hit points? Possibly I overlooked a tutorial message that explained what happens when you die?

Nice work! You even managed to get a bestiary in there. My only comments:

• Sometimes you couldn't see the enemy health bar because it appeared behind the exclamation point balloon.
• It wasn't always obvious to me when I had completed the transition from/to void mode. Some stronger visual or audio feedback might have helped me.
• I would have liked to be able to see your health and sanity bar from the inventory screen, so I can see the effects of consuming health/sanity recharge items.

Unfortunately this game doesn't seem to follow the rules of the competition; the game needs to feature step movement on a square grid with 90-degree turns. Also, and perhaps I'm just not clever enough, but I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with the box and the tables to proceed.

Yeah, I feel bad about that bug. I should have caught it before the deadline. But I'm glad you had fun with it! Thanks for the comments and thanks for playing!

Yeah, I should have done a little more thinking about the combat stats. But thanks for playing, and thanks for the comments!

Yeah, I feel terrible about that bug. I should have found that myself pretty easily.

I really like using LOVE. It helps me get a game up and running pretty quickly. I'll have to check out Spell Tower for solidarity. :)

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! Yeah, the randomness is way off; it's way too easy to get killed off without anything you could have done about it. And yeah, I really wanted sound and visual effects during combat, but I just ran out of time. Those are all great things I could work on post-jam.

Wow, congrats on winning the game! That took some dedication. I definitely wanted the game play to be more strategic and cautious so I'm glad that came across.

Yeah, all the random generation of levels could use quite a bit of work. The collar was supposed to give you a boost to your first-strike chance, so you'd have better odds of getting a hit in before the enemy does. That's related to your speed, which would have been a more important attribute if I'd managed to implement traps, since I would have rolled against your speed to see if you evaded a trap. Sadly I didn't have time to put that in.

Thanks for the video and the comments, and thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! I feel terrible about that bug; I should have found it during testing. As another player has noted, it seems to happen if you hit Enter on an empty inventory square. And I totally agree about the balancing and random placement of stuff. I threw a lot of parameters together without really thinking about them. Definitely something for me to pay attention to if I come back to this!

Yeah, the combat math and loot distribution needs a lot of work. But thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

Correct, there's no audio in this game. Glad you liked it!

Thank you!

You're welcome! Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks very much!

No, just the hero sheets, saga sheet, and ship sheet.

The hero sheets should be available as free downloads under the "Download Demo" section of the game's store page (https://dbisdorf.itch.io/save-the-universe). If you don't see them there, let me know and I'll dig into it.

Thanks for the thorough review!

https://dbisdorf.itch.io/save-the-universe

That sounds great! Yes, I'd love to add them.

Glad you liked what you saw, and thanks!

I've just released Professor Pinball's Castle, a pinball game for Windows and Linux. 

https://dbisdorf.itch.io/professor-pinballs-castle

The game has several challenge events, end-of-ball bonus scores, and a dot-matrix display. It's also open-source, and if you want to build it yourself or use the code for your own Godot-based pinball game, you can find the source here: https://github.com/dbisdorf/professor-pinball.

Oh, also, the game crashed on me once during the Super Breakout level. I got the following dialog box:

Hi there! I just downloaded and gave your game a spin. It's certainly bright and dynamic, and the music is catchy. It wasn't quite for me, though, because of the following:

• Because the block colors were all similar shades, the block wall was graphically uninteresting for me. Also, I thought the basic rectangular layout of the blocks (at least in the first two levels) was dull.  These elements made game play, at times, feel monotonuos to me.
• A couple of game elements weren't obvious. For instance, it wasn't clear that the TNT block caused me to lose the ball, since there was no visual feedback when I grabbed the TNT. The ball and paddle simply reset. Also, it wasn't obvious when I lost a game, since the game simply restarted without telling me.
• I found a couple of the graphic effects disagreeable. I found the screen shake a little annoying. And the stretch/wobble of the paddle made it difficult for me to accurately gauge the size of the paddle, which made it difficult for me to hit the ball at high velocities. I couldn't get past the Super Breakout level because of this. 

It's cool that you live-streamed development of this and are offering the code as open-source. Looking forward to see future versions of this!

Understood. Does that mean that if a single attack overflows a Strain Column, it spills over into another column?

Thanks for posting this, and I'm looking forward to the future versions! One question: what's the practical difference between Medium and Heavy weapons? It looks like they'd both completely erase a Strain Column.

I've finished my entry: A Bottle of Memory.

I've finished writing. 50 Twine passages, 14K words. Since I'm planning to jump into another game jam in March, I'm going to comply with the original deadline. I'll spend a little time testing and proofreading and I'll publish it on Saturday.

12K words written, five Twine passages remaining to write. I may actually have the story complete in time to proofread and test it.

37 of 50 Twine passages complete, and close to 10K words written. Starting to look good for finishing on time.

I've finished 26 of my 50 Twine passages now, with 7700 words written. Looks like I might be writing right up until the last minute. Fortunately I don't have any complicated logic planned, so testing should be straightforward.

I'm making slow progress. I've finished 17 Twine passages out of 49, with 5100 words written. So, a third of the way through, maybe?